The EastAfrican MAGAZINE JANUARY 10-16,2015 food XI COVER STORY 2015’s top destinations FROM PAGE VII Hörnlihütte, a rustic guesthouse; and the opening of Cube 365, a plush single-bed hotel cube that will move to 52 sites throughout the year. There’s also a new wine museum in Salgesch, which opened in 2014 and showcases the region’s unusual varietals, like petite arvine and humagne rouge. 42. Paris 43. Danang, Vietnam For the last The demand for premuim grass-fed, hormone-free beef is growing. Picture: File Afte≥ mad cow, US now allows sale of I≥ish beef It is the fi≥st Eu≥opean count≥y to meet ≥equi≥ements ensu≥ing its beef is safe, afte≥ a ban was lifted last yea≥, w≥ites DOUGLAS DALBY an outbreak of mad cow disease in the late 1990s. The United States had agreed to I lift the ban last year, and Ireland is the first European country since then to have met the requirements ensuring its beef was safe. Although any Irish imports represent only a small fraction of US meat sales, Ireland could find a market among buyers seeking beef raised in pastures and free from artificial growth hormones. “This US market is a huge prize given its size and the demand we know exists there for premium grass-fed beef,” Ireland’s agriculture minister Simon Coveney said in an official announcement on Monday on Irish national radio. “We now have first-mover advantage as a result of being the first EU member state to gain entry. There is also the large Irish-American community, which will be a key target of our promotional efforts.” US authorities imposed the ban over health fears during an epidemic across Europe in the late 1990s that led to mass culling of cattle herds. The formal name for mad cow disease is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, an affliction that kills cattle rish beef will be the first from Europe to be sold in the United States in almost 16 years, after the lifting of a ban that had stemmed from by attacking the animals’ brains and central nervous systems. If tainted meat is consumed, the illness is believed to be capable of causing fatal neurological disorders in humans, mainly through the incurable variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Beef prices in the United States have risen in recent years as a result of droughts and higher feed prices. Australia is a leading exporter of beef to the United States, although most of that meat comes from industrial feed lots — not the openpasture beef that many Irish farms produce. The demand for premium grass- fed, hormone-free beef in the United States, particularly in the restaurant trade, is growing an estimated 20 per cent a year, Coveney said. Last year, the United States imported around $4.8 billion worth of such beef from countries like Paraguay and Uruguay. Coveney estimates that the market could be worth $120 million to the Irish beef industry in 2015. The weak euro — it was trading in the range of $1.19 on Monday — should also help Ireland’s export drive, Coveney said. The approval to begin exports follows an inspection by the US authorities of Irish beef production systems last July, after the formal lifting of the ban in March 2014. The Irish government hopes the US approval might also open other foreign markets. “This is the culmination of two years of intensive work to prove our credentials as a supplier of highest quality premium beef,” Coveney said. The Irish lobbying efforts included playing host to two visits by the US secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack. Authorities in Ireland are now in Quarantined cows during a mad cow disease investigation. Picture: File a position to authorise individual beef-processing plants to export to the United States. Coveney said that his department had been in talks with interested producers and that the work would intensify so trade ‘‘ Ireland could find a market among buyers seeking beef raised in pastures and free from artificial growth hormones.” could begin as soon as possible. Paul Finnerty, chief executive of ABP Food Group, which has farms in Ireland, Britain and Poland and is Europe’s biggest beef processor, said the reopening of the American market was “a significant opportunity,” given the demand in the United States for grass-fed beef. “We have been working on the ground in the US over two years now and sense a real opportunity for our business,” he said in an email. “We have been in negotiations with a number of leading food service and retail players, and we are expecting to make an announcement very shortly.” But some farming organisations were more cautious. Patrick Kent, president of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association, said the news was good only in theory — unless big buyers proved willing to pay more for beef. “Farmers will remain skeptical, given the ruthless downward manipulation of prices by the meat industry over the past 12 months,” he said in a statement. “They are still waiting to see concrete benefits from previous announcements of new markets.” Meat Industry Ireland, a trade group representing beef producers, said it welcomed the announcement. But it cautioned that further clarity was required on the approval process for producers, predicting that the exports would be a niche market concentrated on premium meats sold in relatively low volumes. NYT couple of decades, Danang, on the central coast of Vietnam, has been the place travelers flew into to get to historic Hoi An, a Unesco-protected but tourist-swarmed neighbor 20 miles to the south. But this city of almost a million people has become a worthy destination in its own right. After an airport expansion in 2011, resorts began popping up along the coast. Last year, two luxury lodgings were added: Premier Village and A La Carte Danang Beach. And Denang&rsquo;s charms - long, sandy beaches and kiosks selling bahn mi sandwiches overflowing with pork and pickled papaya and fresh herbs - are even easier to reach since Dragon Air began direct flights from Hong Kong in 2013. 44. Chengdu, China Pandas are this city’s drawing card, but adventurous chefs and boutique hotels are now giving visitors a reason to linger after seeing the star residents. 45. Miami Beach, Forida, US 46. Shanghai 47. Tulsa, Oklahoma 48. Rome 49. Cáceres, Spain 50. Taos Ski Valley 51. Baku, Azerbaijan Baku’s mix of ancient culture and Dubaistyle extravagance is putting it on the tourist map at last. A second oil boom in the Azeri capital has brought enormous wealth to this city on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and with it, a new skyline. The government has recently been converting oil money into rich architectural projects that encircle the Unesco-protected walled historical center. New luxury hotels include a Fairmont Hotel, Four Seasons, Hilton and Kempinski; this summer, the 33-floor sail-like Trump International Hotel & Baku Tower will join them - and just in time for the very first European Games, a multisport Olympics-like event, taking place in June. 52. Kas, Turkey. Kas is on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. While the nearby town of Kalkan has fallen victim to hoards of hard-partying Brits, the old fishing village of Kas remains relatively untouched. Known largely as a diver’s paradise, the city has a hippyish sensibility, partly owing to a number of jazz-playing waterfront watering holes. Visitors interested in the past can use Kas as a base for visits to the nearby Lycian cities of Patara and Xanthos. NYT